Pre-Modern Formation for Biblical Wisdom
Announcing the Alexandrian Institute
Note: The following article is a sponsored post by Dr. Dennis Greeson. Learn more about the Alexandrian Institute by visiting its website.
God has spoken. As the Book of Hebrews says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” (Heb. 1:1-2a). We therefore come to Scripture to hear his voice—in the way he reveals himself and unto the end of knowing Christ.
But in a world in which we’re constantly being shaped in how to think and what to love, what is real and on what basis, this is easier said than done. We may think that to read the Bible well we start with nothing, open the pages and consider the plain meaning of the text. Yet we don’t realize that we pore over Scripture’s pages with already formed questions we think God is speaking to, assumptions about how the words work, and intuitions about what the Bible is for.
The result is that we treat the Bible as a self-help book, or full of models for how to be successful, or even as just a collection of data to be assembled for our systematic theologies. If we’re not careful, we will come ill-prepared to read and to hear.
As Brandon D. Smith points out, Scripture confronts us ready to teach (John 6:45). In late modernity, we are already shaped to be reluctant pupils in this school of Christ, whether we realize it or not. Our intuitions have been shaped to assume that the individual equipped with science and reason is the final arbiter of truth. Or, we might assume that our desires are a trustworthy guide for what is good and right.
Reading Scripture with the Great Tradition
In the Alexandrian Institute, we are convinced that theological education is no less immune from the formative pressures of late modernity. We have launched the Alexandrian Institute as a project in intentionally learning the logic of Scripture, normed by its inspired Words and its theological culmination in Christ, by reading Scripture with the Great Tradition. This is not to idealize the past, but to recognize that those who have gone before us don’t share our current cultural blind spots. In fact, for the wise reader, the consensus of the church’s confessions and ecumenical creeds, as well as the thinkers who shaped them, offer tried and tested convictions for us to receive with gratitude.
We take our name from the example of the Alexandrians, a tradition of theological study in North Africa in the first several centuries of the church that helped pave the way for the theology confessed at the councils of Nicaea (AD 325) and Constantinople (AD 381).
The Alexandrians don’t give us the pure doctrines of Nicaea to just memorize and parrot. Instead, when we read them, we embark on a journey of learning how to read along the grain of the whole canon of Scripture, seeing that the “pressure” of the canon pushes us to confess Jesus Christ is Lord—fully God and fully man, come down for us and for our salvation. To know God and all things in relation to God as he unsettles our sensibilities and reframes our reasoning and imagination—and graciously overcomes our sin—that we might find life together in the light of his self-revelation: that is the work of the Spirit’s inspired words coming to completion.
So, we want to walk the road to Nicaea with the Alexandrians, and with the wisdom of the church through the ages that helps us see the ways we have been conformed to the spirit of our own age.
Join Our Community
We are a global institution seeking to unite students and scholars from around the world while keeping them in their own communities and church contexts. We teach programs “from pew to PhD,” providing students opportunities to join our community through reading groups to advanced research degrees.
Our project in the Alexandrian Institute is to be formed for wisdom and virtue, that we might hear God’s voice and let the Words of Scripture read us. The late Anglican theologian John Webster calls this “theological theology,” that is, biblical reasoning that takes seriously the task of knowing God as he has revealed himself and for the proper ends of knowing him.
Join us as we seek to let our theology be worthy of the One who has spoken by shining “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Cor. 4:6).
Dennis Greeson (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Dean of the Alexandrian Institute. He writes and teaches on the theology of culture, and is the co-author of The Way of Christ in Culture: A Vision for All of Life (B&H Academic) and the forthcoming book Rooted & Grounded: A Parent’s Guide for Raising Kids in Today’s Culture Chaos (Harvest House, 2027). He lives with his wife and three kids in Nashville, TN.